I read it yesterday and have just been giving myself time to let it percolate.

One of the problems with it is a matter of language and conceptual understanding versus experiential understanding with the Weepers: they have discussions about things -- like joy and happiness -- that they seem to be inherently incapable of experiencing. These things should be meaningless for them to even mention if all they're made for is to be miserable.

Then there's the problem of contrasting emotion and experience: if a Weeper can feel nothing but sadness, then he/she truly cannot feel sad, because that is their normal state. They shouldn't even be able to think about being sad; they have no contrasting or comparative experience to guage sadness against. And, in that condition, what do they have to cry about?

Ulira's act of conniving, rebellious vengeance against Cruelot made no sense either, since this whole species was presumably purpose-built to do nothing of the sort. So, it's hard to imagine she'd even be able to think of such a deed, let alone be able to carry it off. Getting the cooperation of the other Weepers should have been impossible as well.

All in all, the Weepers are not what you keep telling us they are -- or at least, not what they keep telling us they are.

Aside from all that, I was a little bothered by the story line. It leans heavily on your version of Creation mythology, and the story depends on that being coherent, yet it all falls apart at the end.

Finally, I thought it a little jarring that the Serpentines have advanced technology. Sometimes SF and fantasy can be blended to good effect in a story, but to me, the SF element felt out of place here; a straight fantasy setting would have been more consistent. The SF element itself was inconsistent: they had 'flash pistols' and an 'energy drill,' but people still traveled in horse-drawn wagons and carriages.

The biblical feel of this piece lends itself to the universe you've built as you have recreated the Genesis story, taking the Truths found within and personified them through the characterizations of the Serpentine race. The inference is that this race of beings are in fact much like humans, who harness innocent creatures and heartlessly abuse them for gain without concern for the grief and torment that is being afflicted upon them by their self centered masters.

Thinking on this deeper, when Eve listened to the serpent who beguiled her into eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden (or "In a gadda da vida" as Iron Butterfly would refer to it later while stoned out of their minds), she - her husband Adam and the rest of humanity, chose to abandoned their Creator's will and in fact, joined the serpent's race (in a spiritual sense), choosing to emulate them than the perfect Creator who had originally made them.

From the beginning, men have enslaved others in one way or another, often through manipulative words leading up to brute force to subdue other beings into slavery, using the creatures under their hand as merchandise and discarding them when they were done with them.

Using the tears that the weepers cry as the merchandise that is sought after by her masters, forcing them through affliction to cry to produce this tear product is a brilliant concept! It is sad that this so strongly resembles humanity. The one thing about humans, they wax philosophical when remembering the harm they've caused to the innocent, but it is usually while they are causing harm to other innocent people.

You've done a beautiful job Barney! This story is full of imagery and it leaps off the page like a literary movie. I can definitely see this as a animation production with orchestral scoring to highlight the action. This works for children and adults.

Yes, I think you've got a treatment for a movie script. I hope you choose to bring this to life in other mediums. It was my pleasure to read this!

Okay Barney, if you haven't seen my "enthusiastic" notes before, I go after stories in several different modes.

Level 1: "Who What Where" - By now I have a theory that stories need to give the readers what might feel like slightly less obvious clues, but are vital to grokking a story.

""Cry for me!" The Baron commanded of his small frail slave." Skimming ahead, I-Reader have *no* idea when or where this is taking place! Earth Past? Earth Present? Earth Future? Middle Earth from Tolkien? Some other alternate setting entirely? The basic problem comes from that it keeps sounding like 1750 with "chambers", yet all these fantasy elements are there such as "Ulira's white wings".

Unlike a TV series, a core problem faced by SciFi story writers *every single time* is that we have to start totally from ground zero.

It's not all that hard - about four clever sentences will do it. So we have Magic Tears... and that seems to be almost all that the World has at first glance.

The raw old rule of thumb used to be "if I don't say, assume 'your world in your time' ". But X lines in, it's clearly High Fantasy. Which is fine. Except for one problem.

Magic.

So I'll leave that note there. In summary, if Author goes all High Fantasy, I want to know about the Magic Rules Pronto.

So these Weepers are currently amazingly well spoken ... yet "uneducated". That risks the "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" effect. From the Weeper's point of view, the Barons' hold is a little brittle - one good upsurge from the Weepers might topple them.

If the Barons' control is strong enough, it might never happen "during this story" ... but with that astounding education gap, it's a deep undercurrent that at least at the Writer Level needs to be recognized.

"I'm sure she will look forward to that," Cruelot laughed. "But tell me, is the drill everything the engineers had promised?"

"It is a beautiful piece of technology. All you have to do is code in the molecular sequence of the mineral you're looking for and the disruptor beam strips away the rest. Rocks, trees, even the soil itself, are all turned into a sort of proto-sludge that can be easily filtered."

See, the problem here is you almost sold us on an Olde High Fantasy tale of Barons and Weepers. But once you mention technology *beyond ours* we start to have trouble with why that *one* piece of absolutely amazing tech exists... and nothing else does!

But now it gets interesting ... Fantasy tends not to have any tech at all! So is the Author playing by the "Rules of Fantasy" or the "Rules of SciFi"?

Just Barely, if you define the Magic Rules of Fantasy, you can escape with a low tech setting. But once you go all SciFi, it becomes *extremely hard* because then you have to allow the entire range of tech* that led up to things like "code in the molecular sequence of the mineral you're looking for and the disruptor beam strips away the rest".

P.S. There's about 10-12 "Copyedit" type glitches. I can go into them in another note if you don't find them once alerted from this note. Copyedit glitches tend to result from "spellcheck-passed" words that sound like the word you want but in fact are completely different. The fancy term is "Homophone".

First, let me thank everyone who took the time to read my story. It means a lot to me to get honest critiques, good and bad.

It seems to me that two main problems have been found with my story:

One: How could the saddest creature to ever exist know that she was sad or otherwise know what happiness by contrast?

Well, if I had the Weepers being truly sad, the story would be over before it even begins. Also, maybe this is just what they have been told to keep the subservient. I think the joy was always there, but it had been forgotten, like so many other things. Only when Ulira is near the end was she able to unlock the joy that hid within her.

I know this is a simple explanation, but the story was supposed to be simple. If you over think it, the story looses its charm.

Two: The blending of high fantasy and science fiction.

I agree that I may have been able to use qualities of both genres better and a rewrite might fix this. But I don't think I need to explicitly follow the rules of one genre or the other. I admit that my skill as a writer is still in its first stages, but I am certain that I can accomplish this. I am already planning several pieces, all adaptations of old classics that blend high fantasy and science fiction (i.e., magic will power space ships).

Also, I never thought of the Weepers tears as magic. I just thought that they had a healing quality. When I think of magic, I think of spells cast by wizards.

And lastly, I would like to say that I appreciate that this story was referred to as a poem. I never thought of it that way.

Also, I never thought about it being presented as an animated movie or in another format. But I am now.